A couple’s flirt
I offered you a timid smile
but you didn’t accept the gift.
Of all the objects and people
mocking me, the lamp
was the cruellest. Being
warm and amber
while the room stayed cold.
I’ve been thinking of reading
Foucault once more.
But I find it so trying, difficult.
It isn’t easy accepting
the limits of my intelligence,
of my capacity to understand.
Ars erotica, there are many things
you’ve avoided with me
and maybe that is why I didn’t finish reading
The History of Sexuality.
I don’t want to be reminded of sex.
I don’t want to be reminded
of the glacial loneliness
that leaves me with no language.
Getting lost and tired of trying.
Now add a partner
Now subtract
everything higher than a caress,
a kiss on the cheek.
There you have it,
my bed.
You’ve come so close to loving me
right, I could almost smell it.
Her efficacious words
the way she touched my turgid belly
and the way she could whisper
with her fingers near my ears.
If only
I could ask her to shut up
the way she would recoil
if only I asked her to come closer.
And I know
she won’t close that book
she understands in ways I can’t,
with her checked PJs and the
halo left between the lamp
and her mouth, vaping.
An integral part of our relationship
in ways that nothing carnal
could ever be.
When she uttered to stop
I was only going closer
belly to butt.
Foucault wouldn’t even
know what to call it.
